The present disclosure is related to video animation systems, and more specifically to methods and apparatus for improved content creation within such systems.
The internet has greatly simplified the sharing of descriptions, narratives, reports, impressions, and the like, whether written, audible, visual or a combination thereof, intended to tell some form of a story. Content created by one individual can easily be viewed by others (e.g., a video posted on YouTube.com or a photo album on Shutterfly.com), pushed out to others (e.g., by email or blog publishing), and so on. The content may be factual (such as a report of a newsworthy event), may be personal (such as a shared on-line vacation photo album), may be commercial (such as a description of a business's professional services at its website), may be artistic (such as music videos), and so on.
In contrast with the relative ease of viewing and sharing content, creation of at least certain types of content remains challenging and time-consuming, especially for the technical novice. This is particularly true for scripted video content creation. As used herein, the term “video content” is content comprising an assembly of a number of visual images forming a scene (such as camera-based digital movies) as well as a dynamically generated presentation of serial images such as real-time computer animation, each usually also including audio elements. The term “scripted” as used herein refers not only to pre-determined spoken word (such as dialog) but also to defined scene characteristics such as lighting, costume, prop description and placement, scene-to-scene transition, sound effects, etc.
For purposes of the following discussion, scenes of video content are formed by assembling a series of frames in a time-wise linear fashion. A movie or clip is a series of scenes assembled together in a time-wise fashion. A character is a representation of an animate participant in a scene. An object is a representation of something other than a character in the scene. A background is the context into which a character or an object may be placed. Characters, objects, and backgrounds are collectively referred to as elements, although elements may include additional items such as sounds, text, scene controls, etc.
Professional-grade tools exist which allow an experienced user to create, edit, and distribute complex, scripted video content. However, these tools are typically very expensive, require sophisticated and expensive hardware, and are complicated to use effectively. Less complex and less costly tools exit for the consumer market, which attempt to simplify video content creation and editing. While relatively simple to use, these more basic tools are typically used to create assemblies of spontaneous video clips with added transitions, background music, narration, titles and so forth, rather than scripted stories. Creating quality scripted video content remains a challenging endeavor for those with limited expertise, time, and resources.
As an alternative to camera-based scripted video content, animation tools are available which can simplify the process of creating scripted animated content. Tools exists which allow a user to select from among an assortment of animated characters, insert those characters into a selected scene, select gestures the character may make, provide text for the character to speak, etc. Various user interfaces for creating content in this way are available. For example, characters may be placed in a scene by dragging then from a palette and dropping them at a desired location in the scene. Dragging and dropping may similarly set camera positions and camera movement. Dialog may be typed into a user interface window, causing the characters to recite the typed text. Scenes may be composed in this way within which scripted events may take place, with the user interface providing control of both dialog and certain scene characteristics. The relative ease and speed with which a user can create scripted animated content in this way suggests that it is certainly an alternative to, and could, in many cases, be a more desirable form of content creation when compared to camera-based scripted video content.
While certain professional-grade and even consumer-grade animation systems can provide significant animation control, the aforementioned drag-and-drop systems for animated content creation are of limited flexibility and produce content that is typically quite primitive. Many useful and important tools, capabilities, and options have either not been considered or are otherwise not provided in such systems. Lack of a robust suite of character features, backgrounds, scene features and transitions, fine control, etc. most often result in longer content appearing repetitive or static, thus losing a viewer's attention, limiting the ability to develop emotion or drama in a scene, etc. Consequently, it is almost impossible to impart important emotional and dramatic continuity and flow, common for example in feature films, to animated content with existing drag-and-drop content creation systems.
When animating a character to speak, text is typed into a window, and a text-to-speech synthesizer “reads” the text in conjunction with the animated character appearing to speak. However, virtually no control is provided over the subtle, and not so subtle, attributes of speech that separate computer synthesis speech from natural, human speech.
Furthermore, known drag-and-drop animated content creation tools are closed. That is, it is not typically possible to import characters, objects, backgrounds, attributes of characters or objects, scene controls (such as lighting and sound effects), etc. from other systems or users.
Still further, drag-and-drop animated content creation tools are typically designed for a single creator (or editor). Only when the content is completed is it made available for general viewing. This precludes the ability to allow an undefined and changing population of contributors to co-create and/or edit content as it is being created.
In addition, existing drag-and-drop content creation systems do not permit reuse of scenes or elements created for those scenes. Once a scene is rendered into a movie it is essentially locked, and may be viewed only. And while it is possible to associate a title with the rendered scene, there are no other tags, notes, or settable attributes for the scene which might simplify indexing, searching for, retrieving, reusing, etc. of the scene, elements in the scene, settings selected for the scene, etc.